This fall … your trailer comes out

East Lansing Film Festival holds trailer contest

Friday, Aug. 16 — Movie trailers really suck. Pound, pound, pound! Enter growly voice: This summer! The only woman he ever loved … was allergic to the only nipple he had left!

Now is your chance to put a stop to the pounding and growling, put that nipple in a tiny place befitting its size, and create your own movie trailer for the 16th annual East Lansing Film Festival, held Nov. 6-14 at Wells Hall on the MSU campus and Studio C! in Okemos.

The festival is sponsoring a contest for original film festival trailers. The contest doubles as a nice promotional tool, although there is a $300 prize for the winner. Your 30-second to one-minute trailer may pop up on the festival’s website and other media and also run before festival screenings. It’s a family contest, so male nipples only, please.

The beauty of this contest is that it’s wide open. Anyone can enter, individually or in groups, although only one entry per person or team is allowed. No one person can be in more than one group.

For anyone who’s been spending their Novembers in Borneo, the East Lansing Festival is the largest and second oldest in Michigan, a yearly banquet of feature, documentary, short and student films from around the world. It contains a festival within a festival, the Lake Michigan Film Competition, recognizing films made in the states that border Lake Michigan (Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana and Michigan.)

Organizers don’t want to hem in the creative types out there, but they want a “clever” trailer, with or without animation, preferably with a sense of humor, that somehow promotes the festival. The trailer topic should also be appropriate for pre-movie screening, with no violence, sex or offensive language. (Explosions and open-mouthed reactions to falling buildings are presumably fair game. Especially if it’s a love story.) Production should be “above average” with good sound and visual clarity. Needless to say, the work should be original and not of the copyright infringin’ sort.

Besides being played at the festival, the first place winner gets $300, an all-access pass to the festival and four tickets to the East Lansing Film Society Film Series at Studio C!. Second and third prized get an all-access pass to the festival.

All entries must be submitted by Oct. 1, with winners to be announced Oct. 15. Videos in YouTube and Vimeo are good, but no DVDs will be accepted. Be sure to include a password if needed and make the file available before midnight, Oct. 1, 2013. Send the link and the submission vial email to lmfc.director@elff.com or susanwoods@elff.com.